t r u t h
by she-who-must-not-be-stalked
Summary: —the fairytale inside your head has become your new best friend. Itachi/Hana. AU.


**disclaimer:** had I owned Naruto, Itachi and Neji would still be alive and breathing. (and happy.) *sniffles*

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_**t**r_ut**h.**

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**one.**

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Hana pressed her face quietly against the tiny glass window on the cold steel door. The direction of her gaze was fixed on the lone figure inside the heavily padded walls of the room. He was huddled in a tightly bound straightjacket, sitting on the floor without making so much as an ear-splitting scream or two that was usually audible in the west block of the Institute known as the quarantine area for high-risk patients.

(Sometimes she actually wondered whether the builders had swindled the hospital management about the whole soundproofing feature that they claimed to have fitted in every single time she found her ears being deafened by the various sounds made by the patients in the Institute.)

Technically the new block – or even the whole Institute compound - wasn't really that off-limits for her or anyone currently attached to the Institute, permanent staff or temporary. She'd still have her job intact despite uh, trespassing… so long that she didn't actually barge into a patient's room without authorization.

Besides, The Institute had installed various security features exclusive to that particular block ensuring the safety of both the staff and patients' alike. The amount of reinforcements Hyuuga Tech put in had literally made the building safer than the Konoha Army fortress.

This was probably the fifth, sixth time this week that she went to his room around the evening – when this part of the Institute was much quieter since most doctors preferred to visit the permanently warded patients during the morning or the afternoon.

For someone who was admitted to the Konoha Institute on being multiply diagnosed of 'bipolar disorder and schizophrenia', he appeared to be relatively sane (enough) and a bit too quiet. She had seen crazy people and dealt with enough on a daily basis since the past two years to know that his condition wasn't quite really what the doctors made it to be.

The old notes compiled together in his records – notes made by one Dr. Orochimaru, of Sound Hospital's Psychiatric Ward – seemed to exaggerate his condition in comparison to the newer ones the Institute made, dated a few days ago by Dr. Kabuto.

Incidentally, _the same Dr._ Kabuto recently transferred to the Konoha Institute from the same Sound Mental Hospital three months prior - along with a few patients who permanently resided in the said hospital. Apparently the hospital effectively went out of business due to the sudden disappearance of the Head Doctor himself, Orochimaru.

There were various rumours circulating around the circumstances of his mysterious disappearance and the shutdown of the hospital itself, none of it more pleasant than the other – and some of it happened to concern Kabuto as well, who was reportedly his assistant of sorts.

Naturally, the information dump Hana had received left her feeling rather dubious at the sudden arrival of Kabuto at the Institute. The rest of the Institute seemed to suspect nothing as they welcomed him into the Institude with open arms.

She actually had informed Tsunade – head psychiatrist of the Konoha Institute - personally the day he showed up, waiting for her quietly inside her office until the crowd surrounding Kabuto dispersed.

Eventually she was told that submitting Kabuto to hours of personal interrogation was pretty useless since Tsunade herself had checked his background with every contact she had in the medical world – and got nothing suspicious. He was completely clean – not a single record of negligence or anything of the sort.

Since then, he had started to warm up to most of the staff in the Institute despite the initial hostility – even entering into a romantic relationship with Shizune, her fellow colleague-slash-personal assistant to Tsunade. Hana couldn't help but feel that something was more than slightly off despite how pleasant his outward appearances might be. Apparently he had insisted on taking Itachi's case the moment his arrival was made known to the staff – and the ever-observant Hana couldn't help but notice a very slight shift at the expression on Tsunade's face, albeit for one or two seconds.

Hana herself wasn't actually directly involved in handling him, save for being the accidental escort to his room a fortnight ago. She wasn't assigned his case since she herself was barely a permanent member of staff (one month) and was therefore a teeny bit inexperienced despite having interned at the Institute since the reopening three years ago.

However, she did manage to sneak a peek at his personal file without arousing much suspicion amongst her colleagues. The liberty of being personally requested by Tsunade to handle the records room also helped her little 'investigation'.

Hana could barely see his face from the spot where she was standing, since he was positioned on his left to the door — but she had recognized his side profile well enough: that slightly muscular chest and limbs of his, the fine angles and planes of his face, his pale skin and the neat ponytail he seemed to constantly wear his raven-dark hair in.. He seemed to be asleep, eyes closed shut— wait, was it even possibly to sleep in the sitting kind of position he was in?

— or so she thought, before he shifted his face to the direction of the door, in _her direction_; his eyelids snapped open, dark obsidian irises staring at her with an unfathomable look in them.

Her already-fast heart rate sped up even further as she felt a heavily-callused hand - _male_ - atop her left shoulder.

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**review?**


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